Product Information

This time around, there's five sets of lights to choose from. Choose from very soft light or strong highlights/shadows for dramatic effect. Need a soft diffuse look while still retaining dark shadows? Not a problem anymore with the use of UberArea lights. You can even combine the presets for even more flexibility.

The MAT presets have also been upgraded. The skin now more closely mimics actual skin when viewed at glancing angles. They also use different SSS profiles based on skin variations and SSS group IDs.

To top it off, Photo Studio Kit 2 now comes with new MATs for most Generation 4 Elite textures. The various SSS profiles used are actually built from these texture sets so you could use them as base presets to be used with other textures with similar skin characteristics.

The materials and lights presets are meant to be used gamma correction enabled and with a Gain of 1 and Gamma of 2.2

Product Notes

Installation Packages

Below is a list of the installation package types provided by this product. The name of each package contains a Package Qualifier (WIP), which is used as a key to indicate something about the contents of that package.

Not all installation packages provide files that are displayed to the user within the interface of an application. The packages listed below, do. The application(s), and the location(s) within each application, are shown below.

Photo Studio Kit 2 (Core)

You can find new icons for loading this product in the following DAZ Studio Folders:

“Light Presets:Photo Studio Kit 2 Lights”

“People:Genesis 2 Female:Materials:Photo Studio 2 MATs”

“People:Genesis 2 Male:Materials:Photo Studio 2 MATs”

You can find new icons for this product in the following DAZ Studio Categories:

“Lights:Other”

“Materials:Feminine”

“Materials:Lights”

“Materials:Masculine”

“Shaders:Lights”

Additional Details

Changes in this version:

The 2nd specular roughness is set to 2% for Phillip, Bree, Bjorn, and Nevio skin surfaces.

Updated Phillip's lacrimal,tongue,teeth,gums,innermouth surfaces to ones used for the others.

Changed some of the MATs SSS Group ID.

Rebalanced 1st and 2nd diffuse colors for Belle's skin.

The materials and lights presets are meant to be used gamma correction enabled and with a Gain of 1 and Gamma of 2.2

Lights:

The light presets will load four lights - three diffuse/specular distant lights simulating a three point lighting and another diffuse/specular distant light to add stronger highlights. There’s also two UberArea light planes for ‘fake’ ambient light.

The intensity for the highlights light is constant with all presets. This arrangement allows you to freely move/rotate this light around and avoid intensity problems (whiteout/blowout).

You can combine some of the light set to simulate a more, ‘complete’ ambient lighting. You will need to rotate the second light preset so it lights the opposite side of the scene and delete or disable the distant lights in the second set. For instance, you can combine two Light preset 2 or one Light Preset 2 and Light Preset 3. As the previous note pointed out, they have the same general intensity levels. You can also do this with Light Preset 4 and 5.

You can also move the offset/rim lights up to 60 degrees into the area covered by another light (for instance, moving the rim lights from 120 to 60 degrees, colliding with the key lights) and avoid full blowouts. Values higher than 60 degrees will cause problems though.

The default color for all lights is light grey (192,192,192). You can change this to warm or cool with the included Cool and Warm color tone presets. If you want to change several lights as one, you can select the lights and apply the aforementioned preset. DAZ Studio will apply the preset to all lights currently selected.

You can also change the color of the bounce lights with the respective Cool and Warm color tone UberArea light presets To apply the change, make sure you’ve selected the lights and have the surfaces selected in the Surfaces tab.

MATs:

The G2M Phillip and G2F Bree presets do not use specular maps. This is intentional so they can be used with other texture/character sets (you will need to do some fine tuning). The others all use specular maps on both channel (1st and 2nd).

The UberSurface 2 MAT presets will load the diffuse texture to the second diffuse channel in the second layer for some surfaces (skin, lips, nails). You will have to insert the respective diffuse textures (face, torso, limbs) to the second diffuse channel when you apply the Phillip & Bree preset with other texture sets.

The specular and fresnel settings are generally the same for all presets. This is again intentional so you only need to tweak bump and specular strength settings when control textures are used.

Bump intensity will need to be customized to each texture set. For bump maps, it is recommended to only adjust the percentage and not the min/max values. If you use too strong bump settings, highlights will generally be very dull. So it's best to fine tune the specular highlights first and adjust bump later on.

If you want to load specular maps, it's best to load them only into the specular strength slot. In general DAZ Studio will not apply any gamma correction if you do this. To make sure, bring up the 'Image Editor' and make sure the gamma settings is set to 1 for specular maps.

Specular strength should be set to 100% when control maps are used. This should help with dim control maps. If you find the highlights to be too dim, instead of raising specular strength from 100%, lower the fresnel strength until you have the desired specular strength level. Vice versa, if you find the highlights are too strong, raise the fresnel strength.

Subsurface scattering:

Unlike Photo Studio Kit MATs, the Photo Studio Kit 2 MATs employ SSS profiles made with different 'style' of skin. For the female MATs: Bree, Amy, Lana, Natasha, Reby Sky and Anna's skin used SSS group ID 3. Ariana is 4, Maya and Belle is 5, Marie is 6. For the male MATs, Phillip, Jeremy and Sol uses 3, Bjorn and Nevio are 4, Rob is 6, Lee is 7.

Teeth uses SSS group ID 1. Fleshy looking surfaces (gums, innermouth, tongue, lacrimals) uses SSS group ID 2. SSS group 0 is unused. This is the same with all MATs.

Each SSS profile have different SSS settings. The advantage to this arrangement is that it allows you to use different texture sets but share same SSS settings without causing SSS group ID problems.

The SSS settings does not take into account SSS control/strength maps, so they shouldn't be used (no maps in the SSS color and/or strength slots).

One exception to the rule - dark skinned characters such as Rob and Marie. Both MATs come with the diffuse textures inserted in the SSS color slots. This is done mainly to control SSS levels on parts that should be kept dark (eyebrows etc) or kept light (palms, feet). Another added advantage is also acts as an added SSS strength levels in general, simulating the effect of low SSS with dark skin.

If you do want to use diffuse maps as SSS control maps, load them into the SSS color slot. You will need to adjust the 1st diffuse channel color if you want to maintain the same luminance levels and raise the SSS strength to 100%.

For characters that's further away from the camera, you may need to adjust SSS shading rate to 2 or 1, depending on the distance (and how much screen space they occupy). If you do have characters that have the same SSS profiles but at difference distances, you should change the SSS Group ID of both so they don't override the other.